Alright, I've got five tips for you for flash users.
So, if you're using flash, you're doing portraits,
I want to show you five real quick tips that'll make your flash portraits look so much better!
[music]
Here we go! Tip number one, if you're shooting outdoors,
Put a gel over your flash! Just put a gel over it.
What does that mean?
Okay, first, what's a gel?
So, here on B&H, you would find a what's called CTO.
So it's color temperature orange.
Go get, like, a Rosco gel that's CTO.
And what you're looking for is one quarter cut. That's the thickness.
Why are we putting a gel over our flash?
Because, when we shoot indoors here,
if I'm shooting in my studio, right,
and we use white light we're used to that.
It looks normal. White light in the studio is perfect.
White light outside looks weird
When you use white light from a flash outdoors, it just looks funky.
Think about this: when you're a kid and you were drawing a landscape,
and you drew the sun. What color did you make the sun?
Yellow! In our mind, the light from the sun is yellow.
Well, if you're shooting at sunset, and you bring in a white light
It looks dumb. It looks amateurish. It doesn't look real.
So anytime I step outside, anytimez
(unless it's night, but I don't really use a flash so much at night. I use it in the day)
but I'm going to put a quarter cut, a thin amount of orange over the gel.
Now when you go--this is interesting--you go to the buy page,
to get the gel, the CTO gel, at the bottom it says recommended accessories:
gaffers tape.
Gaffers tape is the greatest thing ever invented.
It's tape that was invented by Hollywood, right?
The people that move stuff on a Hollywood set are called gaffers, right?
So, gaffer's tape is tape that you can like stick on stuff
and it comes right back off without ripping off the paint or destroying what's under it.
It's amazing. You can tear it with your hands. Every photographer should have it.
So, you cut out a little piece of gel; tape it on with gaffers tape.
That's it! That's all you got to do.
Even if you put it inside a soft box, doesn't matter.
Put that gel on, and it makes people look their best.
The light isn't white anymore.
It's a little tiny bit yellow. It makes people's skin tone look better.
It matches the outdoors. It makes everything look more natural.
So, when you're shooting flash outdoors, your go-to rule
is to make people look their best, to make their skin tone look good.
To make them not look blue or white,
You're going to add a quarter cut of CTO gel taped over the front of your flash.
That's it! That's tip number one.
Tip number two, lower the dang power!
So, I host a photography show every Wednesday at 1:00.
It's called The Grid, and once a month
we ask our viewers to send in their photos.
And when they send in their flash photos, if there's anything wrong with them,
it's almost always the same thing:
their flash is too darn bright!
So, when I'm shooting outdoors, what is my general setting for my flash, right?
And now, I use all different flashes. I use canon flash.
I use Yongnuo. I use Photix.
I got them all!
Whatever flash I'm using, I set my flash starting power
at one quarter power.
And if I change the power of my flash,
it is likely that I'm going to lower it to 1/8th.
That's the most likely thing.
What do I see people out there shooting with? A half and with a full.
And it looks very flashy.
Looks like you went to Lowe's and bought like one of those battery-powered lanterns
and just aimed it at 'em like...
Turn your freaking flash down!
Turn your flash down.
That's it! Turn it down. Start at quarter power,
and evaluate it from there.
Now, your flash should be very close to your person.
Don't put it 20 feet away.
Should be nice and close to them so it's soft and flattering.
But, there you go! Quarter power, that's probably all you're going to need!
Alright, next. This is a trick for shooting outdoors later in the day.
So let's just say it's 4:00 in the afternoon or something
and you want to shoot a nice outdoor portrait. Here's the trick:
First, put your subject's back towards the sun so they're backlit.
The idea is you're going to make them a silhouette.
So, you're going to maybe darken the exposure by a stop or two stops.
Now, I would be shooting in manual mode with flash.
Here are my settings for outdoor flash:
1/125th of a second for my shutter speed.
Number two, my f-stop's f/5.6.
Number three, my ISO is 100.
So, what I would do is, I'm standing in front of my subject.
Their back is towards the sun.
My job is to turn them into a silhouette.
Just darken the exposure. Move your f-stop up.
So, if it was at 5.6 go to f/8, go to f/11,
until they're a silhouette. You don't really see their face.
They're just the outline of their body and the sun behind them.
Only one thing left to do...
Turn on the flash at one quarter power.
The only thing you want lighting your subject is the flash.
So, with the sun behind them, you get a rim light, you get a nice hair light.
By lowering the exposure, it makes the sky darker and looks richer.
And then you light the subject from a 45 degree angle with your flash.
It's a recipe for success, as long as you remember
to put that gel on the front! There you go.
Alright, tip number four.
[sighs, at a loss for words]
Just putting a flash close to somebody doesn't make it soft and beautiful.
In fact, it just makes it harsh and nasty.
But you can make your flash look fantastic so inexpensively.
Go buy a one stop diffuser.
Just a one stop diffuser.
On the site, here at B&H, just search for one stop diffuser.
Now, the diffuser I have is from FJ Westcott.
It comes in a five in one kit.
You zip it open, and there's a diffuser inside.
All you're going to do is hold your flash up. Shoot the diffuser through the flash.
That's it. You are not going to believe the difference it makes
when you do both those simple two things.
It's the cheapest way you can make people look good.
And, bonus tip.
Now you have a one-stop diffuser when you're shooting out in natural light.
So, when you're in natural light, you would just literally take the same diffuser,
(you're not using a flash) hold it between the sky, or the sun, and your subject.
It puts them in a beautiful shade light.
It's a trick photographers have been using forever
and you just got double duty out of the same diffuser, the one stop diffuser.
My final tip is this: if you want to go to that next level of control
(because realistically, if you're using that diffuser trick,
you got to have an assistant or a friend).
So, if you don't have an assistant or a friend,
and you're just a lonely photographer,
you're going to need a light stand.
You're going to need something to hold that diffuser.
What you can do is just get a softbox.
I've used every softbox that you can imagine for flash,
and I've fallen in love last year with Wescott's Rapid Box Octa.
It is literally like about this big.
It's the size of an umbrella. It pops into a soft box.
You can go literally from being in its little tiny case
to up and shooting in 90 seconds.
It's just so easy and so quick, and the results are great.
So if I had to give you five tips--
if I had to give a friend, and they were at a bar.
And they're like, "hey man, what five tips would you give me?"
Those are the five tips that I would give you.